have thought him some prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing their coming. 'There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!'

'Where-away?'

'On the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!'

Instantly all was commotion.

The sperm whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating and reliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from other tribes of his genus.

'There go flukes! was now the cry from 15 Tashtego; and the whales disappeared. 'Quick, steward!' cried Ahab. Time!'

Time!

Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported the exact minute 20 to Ahab.

sheaves whirled round in the blocks; with a wallow, the three boats dropped into the sea; while, with a dextrous, offhanded daring, unknown in any other vocation, the sailors, goat-like, leaped down the rolling ship's side into the tossed boats below...

Meantime, Ahab, out of hearing of his officers, having sided furtherest to wind10 ward, was still ranging ahead of the other boats; a circumstance bespeaking how potent a crew was pulling him. Those tiger yellow creatures of his seemed all steel and whalebone; like five trip-hammers they rose and fell with regular strokes of strength, which periodically started the boat along the water like a horizontal burst boiler out of a Mississippi steamer. As for Fedallah, who was seen pulling the harpooneer oar, he had thrown aside his black jacket, and displayed his naked chest with the whole part of his body above the gunwale, clearly cut against the alternating depressions of the watery horizon; while at the other end of the boat Ahab, with one arm, like a fencer's, thrown half backward into the air, as if to counterbalance any tendency to trip; Ahab was seen steadily managing his steering oar as in a thousand lowerings ere the White Whale had torn him. All at once the outstretched arm gave a peculiar motion and then remained fixed, while the boat's five oars were seen simultaneously peaked. Boat and crew sat motionless on the sea. Instantly the three spread boats in the rear paused on their way. The whales had irregularly settled bodily down into the blue, thus giving no distantly discernible token of the movement, though from his closer vicinity Ahab had observed it.

The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she went gently rolling before it. Tashtego reporting that the whales had gone down heading to leeward, we 25 confidently looked to see them again directly in advance of our bows. For that singular craft at times evinced by the sperm whale when, sounding with his head in one direction, he nevertheless, 30 while concealed beneath the surface, mills round, and swiftly swims off in the opposite quarter-this deceitfulness of his could not now be in action; for there was no reason to suppose that the fish seen 35 by Tashtego had been in any way alarmed, or indeed knew at all of our vicinity. One of the men selected for shipkeepers

'Every man look out along his oars!' cried Starbuck. Thou, Queequeg, stand

that is those not appointed to the boats by this time, relieved the Indian at the 40 mast-head. The sailors at the fore and mizzen had come down; the line tubs were fixed in their places; the cranes were thrust out; the mainyard was backed, and the three boats swung over the sea like 45 up!' three samphire baskets over high cliffs. Outside of the bulwarks their eager crews with one hand clung to the rail, while one foot was expectantly poised on the gunwale. So look the long line of man- 50 of-war's men about to throw themselves on board an enemy's ship. . . . All ready there, Fedallah?' 'Ready,' was the half-hissed reply.

Nimbly springing up on the triangular raised box in the bow, the savage stood erect there, and with intensely eager eyes gazed off towards the spot where the chase had last been descried. Likewise upon the extreme stern of the boat where it was also triangularly platformed level with the gunwale, Starbuck himself was seen coolly and adroitly balancing him

'Lower away there; d'ye hear,' shouting 55 self to the jerking tossings of his chip of

across the deck. 'Lower away there I say.'

The men sprang over the rail; the

a craft, and silently eyeing the vast blue eye of the sea.

Not very far distant Flask's boat was

also lying breathlessly still; its commander recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead, a stout sort of post rooted in the keel, and rising some two feet above the level of the stern platform. It is used for catching turns with the whale line. Its top is not more spacious than a man's hand, and standing upon such a base as that, Flask seemed perched at the masthead of some ship which had sunk to all 10 but her trucks. But little King-Post was small and short, and at the same time little King-Post was full of a large and tall ambition, so that this logger-head standpoint of his did by no means satisfy King- 15 Post.

'I can't see three seas off; tip us up an oar there, and let me on to that.'

Upon this, Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale to steady his way, swiftly slid aft, and then erecting himself volunteered his lofty shoulders for a pedestal.

'Good a mast-head as any, sir. Will you mount?'

'That I will, and thank ye very much, my fine fellow; only I wish you fifty feet taller.'

tentatious little Flask would now and then stamp with impatience; but not one added heave did he thereby give to the negro's lordly chest. So have I seen Passion and 5Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tides and her seasons for that.

Meanwhile Stubb, the third mate, betrayed no such far-gazing solicitudes. The whales might have made one of their regular soundings, not a temporary dive from mere fright; and if that were the case, Stubb, as his wont in such cases, it seems, was resolved to solace the languishing interval with his pipe. He withdrew it from his hatband where he always wore it aslant like a feather. He loaded it, and rammed home the loading with his thumb-end; but hardly had he ignited his match across the rough sandpaper of his hand, when Tashtego, his harpooneer, whose eyes had been setting to windward like two fixed stars, suddenly dropped light from his erect atti45 tude to his seat, crying out in a quick frenzy of hurry, Down, down all, and give way!- there they are!'

Whereupon planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks of the boat, 30 the gigantic negro, stooping a little, presented his flat palm to Flask's foot, and then putting Flask's hand on his hearseplumed head and bidding him spring as he himself should toss, with one dexterous 35 fling landed the little man high and dry on his shoulders. And here was Flask now standing, Daggoo with one lifted. arm furnishing him with a breast-band to lean against and steady himself by.

40

To a landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring, would have been visible at that moment; nothing but a troubled bit of greenish white water, and thin scattered puffs of vapor hovering over it, and suffusingly blowing off to leeward, like the confused scud from white rolling billows. The air around suddenly vibrated and tingled, as it were, like the air over intensely heated plates of iron. Beneath. this atmospheric waving and curling, and partially beneath a thin layer of water, also, the whales were swimming. Seen in advance of all the other indications, the puffs of vapor they spouted, seemed their forerunning couriers and detached flying outriders.

All four boats were now in keen pursuit of that one spot of troubled water and air. But it bade far to outstrip them; it flew on and on, as a mass of interblending bubbles borne down a rapid stream from the hills.

At any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see with what wondrous habitude of unconscious skill the whaleman will maintain an erect posture in his boat, even when pitched about by the most riotously 45 perverse and cross-running seas. Still more strange to see him giddily perched upon the loggerhead itself, under such circumstances. But the sight of little Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet 50 more curious; for sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty, the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine form. On his broad back, flaxen- 55 darted straight ahead of the bow, almost

haired Flask seemed a snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider. Though truly vivacious, tumultuous, os

'Pull, pull, my good boys,' said Starbuck, in the lowest possible but intensest concentrated whisper to his men; while the sharp fixed glance from his eyes

seemed as two visible needles in two unerring binnacle compasses. He did not say much to his crew, though, nor did his

crew say anything to him. Only the silence of the boat was at intervals startlingly pierced by one of his peculiar whispers, now harsh with command, now soft with intreaty. . .

Meanwhile, all the boats tore on. The repeated specific allusions of Flask to 'that whale,' as he called the fictitious monster which he declared to be inces

buck giving chase to three whales running dead to leeward. Our sail was now set, and, with the still rising wind, we rushed along; the boat going with such 5 madness through the water, that the lee oars could scarcely be worked rapidly enough to escape being torn from the row-locks.

Soon we were running through a sufsantly tantalizing his boat's bow with 10 fusing wide veil of mist; neither ship its tail

these allusions of his were at

times so vivid and life-like, that they would cause some one or two of his men to snatch a fearful look over the shoulder.

nor boat to be seen.

'Give way, men,' whispered Starbuck, drawing still further aft the sheet of his sail; there is time to kill a fish yet be

water again! close to! Spring!'

But this was against all rule; for the 15 fore the squall comes. There's white oarsmen must put out their eyes, and ram a skewer through their necks; usage pronouncing that they must have no organs but ears, and no limbs but arms, in these critical moments.

Soon after, two cries in quick succession on each side of us denoted that the other boats had got fast; but hardly were they 20 overheard, when with a lightning-like hurtling whisper Starbuck said: 'Stand up!' and Queequeg, harpoon in hand, sprang to his feet.

It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe! The vast swell of the omnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled along the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless bowling- 25 green; the brief and suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip for an instant on the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that almost seemed threatening to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip 30 into the watery glens and hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the top of the opposite hill; the headlong, sledlike slide down its other side; — all these, with the cries of the headsman and har- 35 pooneers, and the shuddering gasps of the oarsmen, with the wondrous sight of the Ivory Pequod bearing down upon her boats with outstretched sails, like a wild hen after her screaming brood; — all this 40 was thrilling. Not the raw recruit, marching from the bosom of his wife into the fever heat of his first battle; not the dead man's ghost encountering the first unknown phantom in the other world; neither of these can feel stranger and stronger emotions than that man does, who for the first time finds himself pulling into the charmed, churned circle of the hunted sperm whale.

Though not one of the oarsmen was then facing the life and death peril so close to them ahead, yet with their eyes on the intense countenance of the mate in the stern of the boat, they knew that the imminent instant had come; they heard, too, an enormous wallow-sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the boat was still booming through the mist, the waves curling and hissing around us like the erected crests of enraged serpents.

That's his hump. There, there, give it to him!' whispered Starbuck.

A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat; it was the darted iron of Queequeg. Then all in one welded commotion came an invisible push from astern, while foreward the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the sail collapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapor shot up near by; something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, 50 and harpoon had all blended together; and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped.

45

The dancing white water made by the chase was now becoming more and more visible, owning to the increasing darkness of the dun cloud-shadows flung upon the sea. The jets of vapor no longer blended, 55 but tilted everywhere to right and left; the whales seemed separating their wakes. The boats were pulled more apart; Star

Though completely swamped, the beat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across the gunwale, tumbled back to our places. There we sat up to our knees in the sea, the water covering

every rib and plank, so that to our downward gazing eyes the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the bottom of the ocean.

10

The wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed their bucklers together; the whole squall roared, forked, and crackled around us like a white fire upon the prairie, in which, unconsumed, we were burning; immortal in these jaws of death! In vain we hailed the other boats; as well roar to the live coals down the chimney of a flaming furnace as hail those boats in that storm. Meanwhile the driving scud, rack, and mist grew darker with 15 the shadows of night; no sign of the ship could be seen. The rising sea forbade all attempts to bale out the boat. Their oars were useless as propellers, performing now the office of life-preservers. 20 So, cutting the lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern, then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard- 25 bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly 30 holding up hope in the midst of despair.

Wet, drenched through, and shivering

cold, despairing of ship or boat, we lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on. The mist still spread over the sea, the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom of the 5 boat. Suddenly Queequeg started to his feet, hollowing his hand to his ear. We all heard a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards to hitherto muffled by the storm. The sound came nearer and nearer; the thick mists were dimly parted by a huge, vague form. Affrighted, we all sprang into the sea as the ship at last loomed into view, bearing right down upon us within a distance of not much more than its length.

Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as for one instant it tossed and gaped beneath the ship's bows like a chip at the base of a cataract; and then the vast hull rolled over it, and it was seen no more till it came up weltering astern. Again we swam for it, were dashed against it by the seas, and were at last taken up and safely landed on board. Ere the squall came close to, the other boats had cut loose from their fish and returned to the ship in good time. The ship had given us up, but was still cruising, if haply it might light upon some token of our perishing,- an lance pole.

oar or a

Moby Dick, Chapter XLVII, 1851.

DONALD GRANT MITCHELL (1822-1908)

Donald G. Mitchell, or ‘Ik Marvel' as he was known to his contemporaries, was a Connecticut writer, a graduate of Yale, who all his life long, save for the period of a consulship at Venice, was a resident of New Haven, on the farm which he has made so well known with such books as My Farm of Edgewood and Wet Days at Edgewood. He wrote much in many literary fields, - satirical essays, travels, popular papers on farm life, a novel, Dr. Johns, 1866, literary criticism, and history, English Lands, Letters, and Kings, 1889. It was, however, his two early books, Reveries of a Bachelor, 1850, and Dream Life. 1851, that first made him widely known, and it is these two that must keep his fame alive if it is not to perish. The dreamy, genial sentimentalism of these books captivated the readers of the mid-nineteenth century, and one must read them to understand fully the period. but even to-day they have not lost their power over readers. There is a delicacy of treatment, a genuineness of feeling, and an atmosphere of leisurely culture that one looks for in vain in our later writers.

REVERIES OF A BACHELOR

FIRST REVERIE

OVER A WOOD-FIRE

I have got a quiet farm-house in the country, a very humble place to be sure, tenanted by a worthy enough man, of the old New-England stamp, where I sometimes go for a day or two in the 10 winter, to look over the farm accounts, and to see how the stock is thriving on the winter's keep.

One side the door, as you enter from the porch, is a little parlor, scarce twelve 15 feet by ten, with a cosy-looking fireplace, a heavy oak floor, a couple of armchairs, and a brown table with carved lions' feet. Out of this room opens a little cabinet, only big enough for a broad 20 bachelor bedstead, where I sleep upon feathers, and wake in the morning with my eye upon a saucy colored lithographic print of some fancy Bessie.'

It happens to be the only house in the 25 world of which I am bona-fide owner; and I take a vast deal of comfort in treating it just as I choose. I manage to break some article of furniture, almost every time I pay it a visit: and if I can- 30 not open the window readily of a morning, to breathe the fresh air. I knock out a pane or two of glass with my boot. I lean against the walls in a very old arm-chair there is on the premises, and 35 scarce ever fail to worry such a hole in

the plastering as would set me down for a round charge for damages in town, or make a prim housewife fret herself into a raging fever. I laugh out loud 5 with myself, in my big arm-chair, when I think that I am neither afraid of one nor the other.

As for the fire, I keep the little hearth so hot as to warm half the cellar below, and the whole space between the jambs roars for hours together with white flame. To be sure, the windows are not very tight, between broken panes and bad joints, so that the fire, large as it is, is by no means an extravagant comfort.

As night approaches, I have a huge pile of oak and hickory placed beside the hearth; I put out the tallow candle on the mantel (using. the family snuffers, with one leg broke), then, drawing my chair directly in front of the blazing wood, and setting one foot on each of the old iron fire-dogs (until they grow too warm), I dispose myself for an evening of such sober and thoughtful quietude, as I believe, on my soul, that very few of my fellow-men have the good fortune to enjoy.

My tenant, meantime, in the other room, I can hear now and then, though there is a thick stone chimney and broad entry between, multiplying contrivances with his wife to put two babies to sleep. This occupies them, I should say, usually an hour; though my only measure of time (for I never carry a watch into the